I loved this episode so much! I was so engrossed that I didn’t really notice green screens or the camera not moving. The syncing/sound was a little weird, but everyone has covered that. I am disappointed that no one has mentioned El Santo’s dad sweaters. I do what he does. When I find a style of sweater I like, I buy the same style in different colors. I am completely happy that I backed the show.
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Yeah, those were a little awkward. I think if they had put something in the foreground, similar to what Jonah and the bots have, it might have felt a bit more natural. Or at the very least it would be a similar enough visual to what we’ve already gotten used to over the last couple seasons.
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Well, remember Dracula showed off the treasure to his new wife, and I think the remaining plotline was that both Santo and the hooded villain wanted THAT treasure, and to get to it they needed to use the ring and the amulet to mumble mumble step 3: PROFIT! 
But it was hard to hear the movie to follow everything and I haven’t had time to watch the fixed VOD, so maybe it was just a fever dream…
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Ok! So far, so good, I’d say!
The riffing is better paced and funnier, the host segments are tighter, and everything overall felt a lot more comfortable than the Netflix eras. I, for one, felt slightly alienated by the sense of larger scale that the Netflix seasons had, so I’m glad this felt more intimate and homemade. Every character just felt spot on, and I felt taken back to those heyday Joel episodes.
In terms of technical things to hopefully fix before the general release in May, I have only a few small points. I agree with everyone that there was some issues with the sound levels throughout. In terms of greenscreen, I do actually like the aesthetic of it all, but some of the human characters looked kinda blurry when they moved. I couldn’t really get a clear look at their faces, especially in the Kinga and Max scenes. Also, I don’t know if anyone else mentioned this, but it seems like Jonah and the Bots were still making riffs as they were leaving the theater that got cut off by the door sequence. I wanted to hear what they said!
Overall though, I think I was pretty damn satisfied with the whole thing. Great job to everyone involved, and I cannot wait for the next one!
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I third this. My initial feeling is the new theme song lacked the host focus, seemed forced, and had WAY too much Mads in it. A little of Kinga and Max stretches far and having them the center of the intro oversaturated me frankly. The backgrounds and greenscreen sets took me out of the world and echoed of KTMA sometimes and I’m torn whether I like that or not. The corridor sequence likewise lacks that tangible practical quality I associate with the show. Naturally MST3K was born out of low budget homemade roots but the technology doesn’t always compliment that vibe when replacing physical elements with CGI. The Mads sequences especially ring as a local cable show or Captain Kangeroo and not MST3K exactly absent the actors actually being in a space. Felicia and Patton’s theatatrics and artificial surroundings were hard to enjoy joined and tore me out of the reality of the program. Altogether I like what I’m seeing, the live action comic book style of the approaches to digital soutions to production didn’t sing to me personally. I hope it grows on me. I’ll have more thoughts after watching it again.
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I’m currently 40 minutes in, and holy crap this is something. The movie was such a perfect choice for so many reasons, lol.
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I have high hopes for this season.
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One of the things I am most hopeful about is the delayed nature of the episodes. The show isn’t made to be the “bingeable netflix model” I think monthly episodes with some fun “re-runs and events” in between is really going to benefit the show and allow things to breathe.
It also helps to foster community, which is really the backbone of what has kept the show going for as long as it has. We get to talk and think and point out jokes to each other which is great. Treating each new episode as a little event makes things feels more special and “must watch tv” and we get to talk about it here right away instead of waiting for class/work the next day. Which is why this forum and the Gizmoplex is built for fun interaction.
I for one, love the vibe of the new season. Oh we don’t have distribution? We will do it ourselves! We have limitations? Lean into em, and do what we can, it’s still going to be funny! This is what we want to do and you or a plague can’t stop us. We will take our mega talented cast(s) and crew and build a show anyway we can. How punk rock. How inspiring.
Not everyone will like aspects, that’s how the show has always been. I HATED Bill when the Sci-Fi years started, now he is my favorite cast member., truly weird how things change. I lived through the Joel vs Mike newsgroup wars of the 90s; we will all argue and not agree, same as it ever was, and that’s cool. But MST fandom is a roll with the punches and a pretty laidback crew and there are/will be aspects you DO latch on and before you know it, it is a favorite thing, or a thing that makes it special + unique. The show is here, hallelujah, and somehow its soul is intact, hallelujah. We are a pretty lucky group of fans.
12 Likes
Here’s my feedback, for what it’s worth:
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I think this might be my new favourite episode! The riffs were fantastic and I found myself laughing out loud more consistently than any other episode to memory.
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The sound mix was the only truly frustrating thing. If nothing else, I’m hoping the mix hasn’t been locked and they can at least bring up the volume of the movie to match the riffing, as it was hard to hear without making the riffs deafening. There was also an issue with the sound being slightly out of sync, but I suspect that’s an issue with the livestream/replay and won’t be an issue once the VOD version is uploaded.
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The lighting on the mads doesn’t match the background they’ve been composited onto. This could probably be disguised a bit better by coloring the “room” plate to match the color of the fill lights/back lights. This point is perhaps a little more nit-picky than the sound issue, and if only the sound can be fixed before the episode is locked for VOD/Physical releases, I’d be happy.
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All in all, it’s a strong episode, and if the main complaints people have (including myself) are purely technical ones, most of which can be fixed in post, then it’s clear that this series is going to be VERY enjoyable.
I’ve attached two images to illustrate the adjustments I think could be made to the mads’ location background plates. One is the current design as we saw in the premiere, and the other is a rough mockup of adjustments. I’ve also adjusted the levels of the mads too, so that their contrast is a little more punchy and their black levels are brought down a tad. I only have the flattened compressed image of the stream to work with, so the adjustments aren’t as subtle as it would be if working with the raw footage, but it’s just for illustrative purposes. What do you think, sirs?
42 Likes
I too tried to talk small business owners I know into purchasing the Commercial level. But they were more interested in “Maintaining Overhead”
Ugh. Priorities!
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YESSSSSSSS!!! Thank you for mocking this image up. To, me this is a great visual to show that a little more massaging could go really far when it comes to the compositing on this.
Im not sure if @Lesley or @ivan are keeping tabs on all these discussions right now (I’m sure everyone over there is still busy as hell because last night was just the beginning), but I hope someone sees the image you put up for comparison.
I will say some of the compositing shortcomings mentioned in this thread seem to get mitigated on my PC or phone, but on my TV, you see them badly.
10 Likes
On a rewatch, I have to say the “Science” host segment was the weakest part of the show. Just a bit too forced and repetitive with the ending a bit easy to telegraph. Gets a 4 out of 10 while the Wrasslin’ segment gets a 9.
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I enjoyed the QVC/HSN spoof.
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My pleasure. It’s a long-shot being buried amidst this thread, but I too hope it somehow gets seen by the right eyes. The scene as it is isn’t a deal-breaker for me, it’s just that it could be that little bit more believable with a few tweaks.
And I don’t want this to seem like I’m ungrateful for amazing work everyone on the team have clearly put into the new series. Video editing is just kinda my thing, so when I saw the new moon base scenes, it was a little jarring for me, and I couldn’t help but have a tinker, just out of curiosity. 
I really am loving this series so far, and feel like my money has been put to great use.
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Yes! My first thought was “well, if the background had purple lighting, it would look so much better” and here it is! The other adjustments help, but I think that’s the key.
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I thought it was great overall and it was neat to see a bit of the virtual set tour look all post-productiony.
I don’t mind the new look (I myself own good bit of flat-pack furniture, so it feels homey to me already). I totally applaud all efforts for it looking as good as it does given the challenges faced (and conquered).
Minor quibble with the riffing: it’s a vampire movie and was there even a single reference to What We Do In The Shadows? What I would have done for a single “Bat!” (Well, I would have done what I did do - added it myself. 
)
4 Likes
It didn’t move during shots much, but they did place the camera in a lot of different spots and shoot from a lot of different angles… the reboot era has felt like 90+% of the time the scenes were shot from literally the exact same location.
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Since someone asked…
Glad it’s back. Great film choice for out of the gate.
Much better pace and style than the NF seasons. Easing back on the throttle helps.
Glad for no sign of G and W, though they’ll be back.
Meh on the theme, I’d rather it be a solo relating to each host. And no chorus.
Intermission and bts feel were great.
Invention exchange, recipes (concessions?), and an intern!
Riff and segment writing are solid.
Jonah’s host segments were a blast.
Greenscreen, got to work on the compositing. I get raw and unrefined, but this wasn’t it, needs a lot of attention, esp the Mads’ segments.
Panels as BGs/hall doors could use another pass or two to help them get a traditional 2D feel back. It feels like it’s being crept up on. Surprisingly, worked a bit better in the Gizmoplex, but could use a pass there too.
Mads seemed underused except for partial premise set-up. Would love some more of the z-depth in your face that Trace used to do. Their location needs mood.
Jonah’s deliveries could be more ‘observational/hey check it out’ at times, it feels like he’s just trying to get lines out with some and deliver in neutral.
This pairing of Crow and Servo need to re-establish the bot personalities.
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As much as I enjoyed last night, and I enjoyed it tremendously, I thought we were going to get a complete episode last night. Instead I feel like we got a rough cut, a work in progress. I’ll feel better when we have access to the completed episode. I have every episode from the first 12 seasons, and now it feels like I’m missing one.
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Thanks for making this! It was sort of ironic that the lighting on Kinga and Max was a better match to the SOL background behind Jonah and the 'bots, and vice versa.
My response was that the “flatimation” and green-screen ideas are solid, but the execution could be improved. Matching the lighting like you show here would help a lot, and grabbing a finer matte on the actors (see Kinga’s hair in the examples here) could help a lot. We’ve seen the green-screen approach produce stronger results for MST3K (as they showed when explaining why they took this approach in backer videos); my hope is that some of the “unfinishedness” they alluded to includes refining their compositing approach.
In any case, I hope @mattmcg22 and @ivan see this example, as it’s a great way to have a conversation about this.
5 Likes